Boarding

I haven't even posted an update on the fab Sydney trip and now we are
at the airport heading to sunny Queensland. Will post pics and stories
soon.

Bon voyage!!

Sent from my iPhone

My travels

On Sunday I'm heading to Sydney for five fabulous days to myself. I am going to see the Dalai Lama for a couple of days with friends from Queensland I haven't seen for AGES. A few friends are also Dalai Lama-ing so no doubt there'll be some lunches/dinners/drinks for catching up. I'm going to have a look at our house in Summer Hill and I'm going to catch up with Sydney friends for coffees and generally have a lovely child-free break.



On Sunday I'm attending my friend's 40th birthday/Divorce party. They are still in the midst of sorting out property and parenting arrangements and it's all a bit yuck. It's a shame it wasn't all sorted by the time she had her party. Check out the cake:



Then I will be back from Sydney on Thursday night and a week later, we all (me, Mel and Belle) will head to Queensland for our official three-week holiday. We haven't had a three week holiday in.... well since our honeymoon I suspect! We'll spend 10 days on the Gold Coast, a few days with friends on the Sunshine Coast, perhaps a day or two in Brisbane and we'll be in Toowoomba for Christmas.



I don't think I could be any more excited. Let the fun times roll.

Patience, grasshopper

I got onto eBay and bought a lens for my camera. It's a fairly standard lens except now it comes with Image Stabiliser (I.S) and the one I'm using is the one that came with Mav's camera 5 years ago and back then they didn't have I.S. It cost me $170, but if I bought it with my camera I would have paid about an extra $300 so I thought I got a bargain.

Also, apart from wanting the I.S. function it occurred to me that since I stole all Mav's lenses to use on my new camera, he actually can't use his camera. D'oh! How unlike me to be thinking completely of myself.

Here is the lens that I am patiently waiting to have delivered by registered post. Ok, there is nothing patient about my waiting. I paid on Sunday night and it was posted on Monday from Melbourne and it's still not here. I have checked the post box several times every day. I have called the local post office. I have re-checked the postage date with the seller. That lens had better be here today.





The worst thing about this whole experience (or the best thing, depending on how you look at it) is that I have discovered there are many, many lovely lenses on eBay for a fraction of the retail price. I could really spend some money if I had money to spend. Which I don't (darn being a full-time student). Another lesson in patience....

How remiss of me

It has been brought to my attention that I alluded to the possibility of relocating overseas next year and then never followed it up with details.

Well it wasn't really an accident. We still don't know anything definite which is why I haven't said any more (at least not on the internet). But it looks quite likely that Mav will take a job in the Middle East next year. This will pose a few dilemmas...

Firstly, I need to stay here and finish my Masters. So regardless of when he goes (possibly anywhere up to and including July??) we'll be on opposite sides of the world from each other for a wee while. I'm used to being a single parent but I kind of like that he comes home fairly regularly, so I'm not keen on this idea. I'm quite sure Miss Annabelle will not be thrilled either.

Secondly, even when I finish my Masters, I'm not sure if it will be recognised where we are going so I may have done all this work to not be able to practice. Hmmm.... that would be a bitch to say the least. I still have to find out more about that yet.

On the upside, it would be a great experience for a few years, there is a great ex-pat community so we'd have lots of friends, and coincidentally enough, even some of my Adelaide friends are thinking of going there. So I could just take the Adelaide crowd with me to Arab-land. :)

There is also good money to be made, of course. And there would be excellent schools for Annabelle.

There is restricted access to the internet and no Skype. And I don't want to give up my pots and plants and not be able to get a dog. (I'm back on the downsides now).

So if I spend too much time thinking about it, I'm like a pendulum going back and forth, back and forth deciding whether I'm excited or anxious. A bit of both. So rather than think too much about it, I'm focusing on finishing my course and having a very lovely holiday in Queensland in December. Will post details as they come to hand...

Hello, blog.

I've been rather neglectful of our relationship of late. I've thought about you, but given other matters higher priority. I feel badly about that.

The good news is that tomorrow is my final day of placement and for the most part, it has gone very, very well. I've learned some invaluable skills and I feel like I've really progressed a long way along my path to being a good therapist. Still a long, long way to go of course... but for now I'm happy with how far I've come.

So now I have one essay to write, and an ethics application to submit for my research project (so that I will be able to get cracking with my research in the new year) and that's it. My work is done for the year.

Except that the other wee jobby I have to get done is marking those FUCKING 2nd year assignments. argh! Whose stupid idea was it to take on tutoring this semester? The tutoring bit was ok. The money was so-so. The bloody marking though. Faaaaaaarrrrkkkk... it is never-ending!! At first it was taking me a minimum of 30 minutes to mark a paper, and then after marking a few, I was going back to re-check the marks I'd given. So really about 45 minutes per paper. Which might be ok except that there are 75 of the bastards to be marked!! I did some quick sums and realised that I DO NOT have a spare 40-50hrs up my sleeve.

So now I'm being ruthless and I've got them down to 15 minutes per paper. I figure no tutor or lecturer has ever been sufficiently concerned about the future of my academic career (or my feelings for that matter) to invest 30-45 minutes on any paper I've written. So 15 minutes it is.

When it's all done, I'll be back to share stories. For now, I'm going to bed to get some decent sleep because sleep is something that I've been sorely lacking.

Photo updates

I tend to post all my photos on Facebook and then couldn't be arsed putting them here (it's much slower here...) so I thought I'd post a few recent ones from ....first of all... our breakfast in McLaren Vale at the weekend.

I got a new printer

I know that doesn't sound very exciting but OH MY GOD, how much do I love my new printer?! I had a HP Multi-function thingo which I just realised is 5 years old. It cost me about $700 from memory. I know. No kidding. It had a fax machine that we don't use, a scanner that for some reason wouldn't work and it is noisy and slow when it prints. Being a uni student, I do A LOT of printing. But it cost me $700 so why would I replace it? And yes I know that they've come down in price but IT COST ME $700!!

Yesterday I was at officeworks and I saw a HP Multifunction PHOTO printer for $137. How bloody cheap is that? I've spent more than that in printer cartridges in the past six months!! I'm not even kidding. It's almost cheaper to buy a new printer than replace the cartridges?! (hmmm... maybe I really need a laser printer....)

ANYWAY, of course I bought it on the spot.



It doesn't have a fax which is fine. It does have slots where you can insert any kind of memory card or USB to print photos directly, a separate tray for photo paper, a preview screen where you can look at your photos and edit them before printing and it's so FAST and so QUIET. ooh ooh, and it prints onto CDs and DVDs. It's got a special tray that you whack them in and it prints labels directly on them.

It is now my second favourite thing after my new camera. No wait. My third favourite thing after my camera and my iMac.

But you've all got one of these special fancy things already haven't you? You're all going "DUH, Cass! Where have you been? OF COURSE we've got super-cheap, super-fast, super-fabulous photo printers". See, that's the beauty of it. The sheer excitement that comes with suddenly realising that something could be SO GOOD and never having heard of it before. I'm completely in love.

Annabelle's first sleepover

So you all know that Annabelle has a best friend called Ebony (Ebby or Bee to her friends). Ebby goes to a different daycare centre now but they see each other most weekends.



Ebby's mum, Carley, is great for organising social events so there are about four or five families that now regularly catch up for dinner, barbecues, the Fairies (reminds me I haven't posted Fairies photos!) and the girls love having things to look forward to on weekends. Even when there isn't a planned event, they usually are back and forth to each other's houses most weekends - often with three of them gathering at someone's house or the lot of them going from house to house while we parents take turns to do the child-minding or getting a break. It really has made all the difference for us to have a social network and to have the opportunity for a break occasionally.

SO... Ebby has been having sleep-overs for quite a while. Annabelle, on the other hand, has spent one night away from me in her whole life and that is when her dad took her to Victor Harbour one night over the Christmas holidays. We don't "do" sleep-overs. Annabelle wakes several times a night and I'm not at all comfortable with her waking up somewhere else and not knowing where I am. But she has been asking to sleep over at Ebby's house. We often go there for dinner and Ebby flakes it and Annabelle hangs out with us until we come home around 9pm. She ends up tired and grumpy the next day when she still wakes up at her normal 6am. So there was that.

I also started thinking that it would be nice for us to eventually be able to have a night out (like for our wedding anniversary) and to have her looked after by someone and not stress about it. We don't have grandparents or any relatives around so this has never been an option for us and I figure close friends are the next best thing. So I suggested to Carley that we *try* a sleep-over. Carley has been telling me for ages that Annabelle will be FINE and that she can sleep over any time. So she said "Sure, come for dinner Friday night and leave her here". Easy as that. EEEK!!

Annabelle was SO excited about sleeping at Ebby's house and told me that she is going to sleep at Ebby's house for "lots of days" and that she will come back and see me "another day". Good to know my place!

We had dinner and I put Annabelle to bed. Easy. Carley kept topping up my wine and since we weren't driving, I kept foolishly drinking it. What's with that? "Oh I don't have an excuse to not drink so I'll drink LOTS". I ended up feeling quite drunk and unwell. Bleuch. Maybe it was my nerves. Not to mention Carley is a terrible influence. ;)



We got home and I had the phone switched on and beside my bed. I must have told Carley 55 times before I left where Annabelle's clothes were, and what to do if she wakes up, and to call me if there's a problem, and that her swimming clothes were in a separate bag to the other clothes, and I just adjusted her blanket, and I put a pillow beside her in case she rolls off the mattress because she usually does, and she talks in her sleep so if she yells out, she might still be sleeping, and if she wakes up she won't go to you, you have to go to her and to CALL ME if there's a problem. Carley told me to shut up and get over it.

When I woke up the next morning - apart from having a hangover from hell - I couldn't help thinking how quiet and lonely the house was. Mel got up and started working on some stuff on his computer so it wasn't like we even got "quality" time together! Ok, it was nice to suffer in peace and lie in bed until 8am but I was annoyed with myself for drinking too much and not being able to enjoy our first morning EVER waking up on our own. First thing I did was text Carley to find out how it went. Annabelle slept through the night - called out once (in her sleep) at 5am but then woke up at the usual 6.15am. No tears. All good.

Eventually I got up and dragged myself to the gym and I picked Annabelle up at 11am. When I arrived they were playing in the park next door to Ebby's house. I gave her a big cuddle and asked if she missed me. She said very matter-of-factly, "No". Alrighty then.....

hmmmm... I'm glad it went well but I'm not sure I'll be making it a regular occurrence. It may be true that it's me who isn't ready and not her, but that's fine. I admit it. I'm not ready.

More dancing babies

They all love Beyonce! Check out this little rockstar.

My cards are amazing

We had friends over on the weekend and I did card readings.

Oh.

My.

God.

I even amazed myself!!! For one of my friends I mentioned a new business opportunity overseas, a legal conflict with a woman, an emotional issue causing her to have health problems. She said that I hadn't said one thing that didn't make sense to her.... and she had never told me any of it.

The next one wasn't so amazing but I mentioned her starting a new job (which I knew anyway) and there being one woman who she needs to watch out for and another who is a friend and ally. Also two men who she works with being helpful but there wasn't much more about them. Also possibly changes coming up with her husband's job (which I didn't know). She confirmed all of it.

What amazed me the most was that while I was reading cards and all this stuff was coming out, it turned out that two of my friends (as in, Annabelle's friends) might have the opportunity to relocate overseas next year. But get this. To the same place we are considering relocating to! :-0 We could end up on the other side of the world with all of our Adelaide friends. How weird is that?

Unsettled

There are Things Going On. Not bad things, just Things. Changes. I'm not allowed to talk about the Things quite yet because nothing is confirmed, but the changes will not be insignificant if they do happen. In fact, they will involve entire turning upside down of one's life and lifestyle.

I'm feeling rather unsettled and anxious about the whole thing even though nothing is definite yet.

More later. For now, I need to focus on what's in front of me, i.e., my stupid uni presentation and my stupid ethics proposal so that I can finish this stupid Master's degree.

What a day

I cried again today. This is the 2nd time I've cried at placement. What a sooky la-la.

The first time I had to actually cancel a client because I was a blubbering mess. We had done a morning meditation during which our supervisor, Matt, told us to "breathe in all our discomfort" (instead of the usual pushing it away that most people do, y'know?) And to breathe out compassion and kindness to all the people in the world experiencing discomfort. Breathe in the discomfort. All the painful feelings you don't want to experience. Breathe them all in. So like a good little student, I did. And then after it was over, I bawled my eyes out. I actually had to work hard not to blubber *during* the meditation. Waaaaayyyyyyy too much discomfort for my liking that day.

So immediately after meditation finished I had to ask Matt for advice about a client. There I was asking about a client while having a total emotional breakdown. When he gave me a slightly quizzical look regarding the possible reason for the emotional breakdown, the only explanation I could come up with was "Well, you would go and make me breathe in my discomfort!" I tell you what though, if you're ever going to have a personal crisis, a psych clinic is a good place to have one. He very gently asked me if perhaps I might prefer to cancel the client. Lucky one of us was in control of their faculties because I SO could not have seen a client but I was all OF COURSE I'M NOT CANCELLING THE CLIENT! ARE YOU MENTAL?!!!?

Needless to say, I cancelled the client. .

So that was several weeks ago.

Today, we had our usual weekly supervision and it felt like I got hammered. I didn't actually get hammered but that is how it felt. Probably I'm just feeling fragile and overwhelmed and stressed again. I was kind of ok with it, but he (poor, frazzled, sleep-deprived Matt dealing with neurotic students day in and day out) came to see me later to ask if I was ok after my hammering and to tell me it's no reflection on my performance, and that I'm doing really well. And the floodgates opened again. I'm a basketcase, there's no doubt about it.

Let's see if I can get through to the end of placement without getting myself committed.

Long time, no blogging

I'm so bloody busy I can't even think straight. No kidding, it's like information comes into my head and falls out my ears. I can't retain anything. We seem to have a calender full of dates - for both business and pleasure - that keeps growing longer and so every time someone says "How about doing such-and-such on this date?", instead of me being able to do my usual "Oh it's a Sunday. Yes, Sundays I'm free" or "Yep, Fridays I'm home with Annabelle", I'm having to go "Hang on.. which date is that? A Saturday in September? ummm let me see".. and run through the filofax in my brain to work out what's going on before replying "No I'm sorry, Saturdays in September and October are all booked but I do have a Saturday in November still available. Hurry though! It won't last!" argh!

It doesn't help that I have chosen to keep Annabelle home on Thursdays and Fridays. Lovely for girl-time, but not lovely for keeping up with all the extra bits and pieces that need doing but simply do not get done with a 3yo underfoot.

Anyway, enough whinging. I have an ethics application to write.

Presents all 'round...

You know how I said I got some money? Well, so did Annabelle. Not only did she inherit a little bit, but we have been saving all her birthday money for quite a while and putting money into her account every fortnight so she's got quite a fat little bank balance for a three year old. The idea of the birthday money has always been to save it up and get her something for the backyard like a swing-set or trampoline and the rest is just hers to buy a house with or something. (Just in case you think we are cheapskates raiding her bank account to buy her presents LOL!! Well, ok we are...)

SO, we went to Toys R Us to try (for the gazillionth time) to get her something for the backyard. Every time we try to buy something "big" for her the stores are either out of stock or it's not on sale or it's going to take four months for delivery or something.... So her bank account keeps getting fatter and the backyard stays empty.

Well, this time they had them in stock. And it was swing-sets that were on sale, not trampolines. A bit like this one, except with a slide on the side.

I was swaying towards a trampoline because all her friends have one but when we saw the difference in prices, Mel was quite partial to the swing-set. And you know.. all her friends have got a trampoline so maybe swings are good for something different. So we ordered the swing set and it will be delivered this Friday. Which gives us five days to use it as a bargaining tool. "What's that? You don't want to go to bed? Oh well, looks like I'm calling up the man to tell him not to bring the swing set!". You get the idea. It's working so far.

But meanwhile, she spotted the bikes. We had every intention of getting her a bike for her birthday but she didn't want one; she wanted a scooter. So we got her a scooter and she does love it but she's a bit dorky on the scooter. She hasn't quite got the hang of it. So yesterday we put her on a bike with training wheels and she took off around shop, whizzing up and down all the aisles on it. Better still, she had zero interest in the "Barbie" bike for $150 and seriously wanted the "Butterfly" bike on sale for $70. Done deal.

When we got home and dad finished building the bike, we headed out to the park, her on her bike and me with my 450D. Still practising with the camera but got a few nice photos.

I bought a new camera

I got a bit of money so I decided to buy me a present. Here it is - a Canon EOS450D:



It's only... oh let me see... TWO HOURS old!!.. so I haven't had much chance to play with it yet but OH how I look forward to playing with it. We've always had Canons in this family so I bought this one so that I can use all our other lenses on it, and just because I'm pretty familiar with how they work. You know, since I did a 2-day course and became an expert and all that. Heh.

Anyway, it's just turning dark and Miss Annabelle and I are off to meet Mav at the pier for Friday drinks. I might get some nice pictures of boats that I can post. I'm excited!

and another...

Thanks to Beany for this one. Story of my whole life. :)

Beached as, bro

For my kiwi mates. Made me laugh and laugh.

I went to the psychic fair

Adelaide seems to have a lot of these events and my friend Dija and I (as well as her mum and her sister, Linda) love to get along and have a reading or three to find out what's in store for us.

Linda always wants to know if she's going to have another baby, Dija (being a mother of seven) wants to know if she can rest easy that there are NO MORE BABIES and I'm usually far less interested in babies and much moreso in prophecies of fame and fortune and basically how much longer until I get on Oprah, dammit.

I was a little concerned that today they all said pretty much the same thing and it had nothing to do with fame or fortune. Specifically they said that I have way too much nervous energy, my nervous system is very "shaky" and that if I don't do something about letting go of stress and worry, I'm going to get sick. hmm... ok. I've been a bit stressed so that's a fair call. Except one woman went as far as to say "I mean it! If you want to be around for your daughter, you will pay attention to my advice!". EEK. That's a bit serious.?!

I know lots of people are sceptical of these things but some things were said that were kind of freaky. For example, one woman who said (like they all say) that I will have a baby boy told me what name she thought he would have. It is only in the past week that I have been thinking that this IS the name I would like for my baby boy. (and no, I'm not telling you what it is!). Trust me, it's not a common name. It's a name that's a bit dorky so I've been tossing it around thinking "I wonder if my kid would get paid out if I called him this" so it blew me away that she said this was going to be his name, with absolutely no prompting from me.

One also told me that someone close to me (she named the person) is suffering from a particular medical condition (which is true). Again, I'm not going to go into details because it's personal but it is a very specific thing and not something a psychic could just pull out randomly and pin on a person thinking it's general enough to get a few "hits". Not a chance.

There was talk of a person called Helen who has cats. Mel's mother is Helen and she fosters abandoned cats from the RSPCA. There was something else about Mel being totally shitted off with his work (which he is) and that she's amazed he hasn't told them to get stuffed (so am I). And lots more stuff that was all interesting and insightful.

Whether it's a load of drivel or not, for me it was worth the money to have a fun morning out with girlfriends comparing psychic predictions...

I don't think I'll be having an exhibition any time soon...

I'm doing a 2 day course on how to use a digital SLR. It is really great to learn all the different camera functions, but also really frustrating because it is bloody hard to keep your camera on "Manual" when it is so much easier to put it on "Idiot-proof" (as the instructor calls it)!!! Photos are so much harder to get right, but I appreciate that it's the only way to learn so I'm just trying, trying and trying again and taking a lot of shitty photos along the way.

I got some printed today and will take them in tomorrow to get feedback. Meanwhile, I took a few this afternoon and while the photos themselves were not crash hot, I did have fun playing around with them in iPhoto. It's a blessing and a curse to have access to all these tools that make your photos look nice. It means you don't really need to be a great photographer at all. But I want to be one anyway. :)

If you click on any of the photos, you can see them bigger. I don't know why Blogger makes them so tiny...





My next project is going to be learning how to us photoshop. My mum and dad bought the latest Creative Suite and have kindly allowed me to load the software onto my Mac. Yay!

Tutorial update

Ok, so tutorials are not every week. This is somewhat of a relief. They are around every 3rd week (4 in total across the semester). So in my state of relief I decided to take on a Friday tutorial as well. I figure I can just drop Annabelle with her dad for an hour and collect an extra $70 as I pass go.

What I didn't count on is that the extra class of course means an extra 15 assignments to mark. Bugger. I think when you take marking into consideration the hourly rate drops to about six bucks. No kidding!

So at the end of semester when I have my own stuff winding up... ie assignment, research project etc... I will also have the pleasure of marking 75 assignments. Argh!! Was this a good idea??

uh-oh... not the piggy

I feel ill. Not terribly ill. Not ill enough to have to stay in bed for instance. But I have a feeling I'm on the edge of something. My ears have been blocked for about three days and I've had some dizzy spells. I feel slightly nauseous. And I noticed this morning that I have a greatly reduced tolerance for noise (read: squealy child).

Oink.

Annabelle

She says some funny things and some frightful things. Either way, she entertains us on a daily basis.


Tonight while watching Home and Away she saw Charlie step onto the road and get hit by a passing car. She turned to me as if she was the mummy and I was the child and she said "See? That's what happens."

She has also worked out that swearing is a great way to relieve stress. You may or may not be aware that there is research to support this. (true!) So when Annabelle is really, really cross with us she squares up and says in a very angry tone "FUCKEN!!" That's it. Just Fucken. Nothing after it. Sometimes it's accompanied by a smack, so we attempt to curb the smacking but I'm not sure what to do about the language. I mean really... I got cranky in the car the other day and called another driver a fuckwit, so how can I hope to teach her not to swear?


She has a fabulous little group of friends from childcare and they are all spending a lot of time together on the weekends and we are now arranging dinners and barbecues as family groups. That has been great for making me feel more settled in Adelaide. We are enrolling them all into the same kindy next year and the same primary school the year after that. Yes, primary school. I figure as long as I'm here I might as well embrace it, right?


Where was I? Oh yes, when referring to past events, as far as Annabelle is concerned everything happened "To 'smorning". Doesn't matter if it was yesterday or last week or six months ago. It was "to 'smorning".

There are so many more and I really need to write them down.

Oh yes the latest is "You're not my friend". One day she was adamant that I was not her friend, only daddy was her friend. I told her that I think we are all friends and we all love each other. She told me firmly, "No. I only love one 'chuther".

Anyway, I need to go to bed. I have my meeting in the morning to get my tutorial work to study!!

Fast and furious

That's how my life feels at the moment. I kind of thought after the full-on whirlwind that was first semester at uni, that this semester would be pretty laid back and cruisey. HOW WRONG WAS I?!!! I don't even know where to start, or even how interested you are, so let me give you some dot points...

• Placement is FAB. I have three clients (four actually, but one is a repeated no-show and apparently that's fairly standard in public mental health) and hopefully a new one next week. We are supposed to treat anxiety and depression but of course no-one is that simple so I have a multitude of complex clients and I'm learning SO much. I love it.

• I now have a supervisor for my research project! Yay! Now I just need to finalise my research topic. hmmm... My interest is in maternal and infant mental health and my topic is either going to be evaluating a mindfulness-based treatment for pregnant women to reduce risk of PND, or to evaluate a mental health training program for midwives. If it's the latter, I will design and deliver the training, as well as evaluate it. If it's the first option (my preference), the group is already set to go and I'll just need to help with recruitment and do all the evaluations. But the most important bit is finding a supervisor and I LOVE my supervisor. She's about my age (perhaps a bit younger since I'm an old bag), her interests are very much in line with mine, she has a little 2.5yo daughter and she's really lovely. So I don't really care what the topic ends up being, I think I'll really like working with her.

• I have one actual uni subject this semester and the first class was yesterday. Give me strength! After being on placement, it was extraordinarily painful to sit back in a classroom and listen to a dry 3-hour lecture. Bleuch. Not to mention having to think about doing assignments again. I'm dry-wretching at the very thought of it. No more about that. Thinking about when I'm going to fit it in raises my blood pressure.
  

• Last but not least, I put my name down to do some tutoring work for 1st year students (anyone can handle first years, right?). I'm not talking one-on-one tutoring, but running the actual first-year tutorials. Anyway, they had too many people apply so I missed out on a spot... never mind. But the next minute, I got an email asking if I'm still free and would I mind taking a few third year tutorials. What?? Third year?? I did third year about 20 years ago and I'm pretty sure I didn't do very well at it THEN!! So I said I could only do Thursdays, thinking that would pretty much count me out. She said FINE, she's got a class that runs on Thursdays and would it be ok if she puts my name down for a few of them. Sure, I said. WELL... I have now been allocated the whole three tutorials each Thursday and I think I'm doing this for the entire semester..?? Fark! The woman who hired me assures me I don't need to actually know the stuff to run a tutorial. THIS IS GOOD NEWS!! So I'm meeting with the head teacher tomorrow to get all my reading material and do my paperwork and I'm going to have to start studying up on that before they feed me to the third years next week. eek!! The best part is it's reasonable money and I could use some reasonable money.

Umm.... I think that's it for uni stuff. I have lots more updates though, so perhaps I'll hit submit now and come back with other stuff later. :)

Grey's Anatomy.. Homeopathy Style

Of course most of you who know me well will know that I TOTALLY buy all this hippy crap!! But at the same time I do sometimes give myself a quizzical look and say "Surely you cannot be serious?" Which is why this really made me giggle. :)



(And thank you to Julie for the link!)

..... update ..... update ..... update .....

Boy, it's been a while since I was here. We had the Sydney trip which was excellent. Unfortunately not many photos of that though! The only time I remembered to get the camera out was when we had a coffee with Simone and Flynn. They have just moved back from the UK so it was fab to see them. Miss Aurora (2yrs) didn't join us so we hope to see her soon. Annabelle was very keen to hold the baby as you can see!




I would just like to point out that the following two photographs are not fantastic but they were taken by Annabelle, budding little photographer that she is! She knows how to turn the camera on, point and shoot. Anything more complex than that is beyond her but I'm sure she'll be an expert in no time!



Sadly, Beany's 30th birthday was cancelled due to her being hospitalised with gallstones of all things?! But apart from that disappointment, I got to see all my favourite Sydney people and had a really lovely time. Aaahhhh.... how I miss Sydney.

SO now I'm back and I've been on placement for two weeks. I've got two clients and another two due to start/take over in the next week or so. We are pretty much flying solo now apart from a group supervision once a week! But I'm loving doing something real with real people and real problems instead of sitting in a classroom or writing assignments *yawn*. I also really like the group I'm on placement with so that helps.

Just around the time we started on placement, the Director introduced morning meditation for 15 minutes each day. How much am I loving that??!! I swear every single workplace should have morning meditation. Very cool.

In other news, Mel has just left for two weeks overseas. Part of it is work and part is his mate's 50th birthday party in China. I'm sorry that we couldn't all go, but obviously it clashed with placement and we really couldn't afford to fly three of us over there just for a few days. So I hope husband has fun and I hope I survive and you can be sure I'll be getting my solo holiday in the very near future as repayment!

Annabelle is so gorgeous I could eat her up! I really need to write down the things she says because she's a scream. Honestly, she cracks me up every day. For now, I'll settle with posting a few recent pics.

For starters today she was calling to show me what she'd done. When I walked in, I was amazed to see that she was busily going one by one through her puzzles and getting them done. Most are WAY easy and she knows them back to front, but a couple are quite hard, and this one that she's doing we only bought last weekend in Sydney. It's about 36 pieces or something. Check her out!



And here are a few recent birthday party pics that I finally got around to uploading!

Annabelle's new favourite clip

How cute is this?

Annabelle calls it "the singlet song" because she thinks the words are "All the singlets, all the singlets, all the singlets, all the singlets....". She thinks this kid is very cool and tries to dance just like her.

Fun. Part I.

You know all that fun I said I was going to have? Well, we just had the first instalment. We stayed in a beach house at Port Elliot and did the touristy things. Took the horse-drawn tram to Granite Island, rode the Cockle Train from Port Elliot to Victor Harbor (a 10 minute ride, but sooo beautiful along the beachfront), went for walks, shopped and drank coffee. It was relaxing and lovely. Here's a couple of quick pics before I go to bed...

"Look! Here comes the train, Mummy!"



Enjoying the view on Saturday morning...


One Clydesdale pulls this tram which carries 50 adults!



More later. Going to bed early tonight since I have my first proper day of placement tomorrow!

All done

I have officially completed five out of eight subjects of my Masters course, and had my first day of placement.

I'm online only briefly to tell you that I'm off to pack a suitcase and head to the beach for a lovely long weekend where I plan to read a novel, listen to my iPod, and not give one minute's thought to adjusted risk, attributable risk or any of the other DEAD EASY exam questions I completely stuffed up that are going to take my final grade from a High Distinction to a Credit (no really, I've let it go... breathe in, breathe out.. *tap tap tap tap tap*).

First day of placement was a brief orientation to the place. We sat in on group supervision with the outgoing group of interns (that was ermmm...interesting) and got the admin tour. Within the next few weeks I'll have my very own caseload of patients to practise on. Yippee. And holy crap. And yippee!

Right.. things to do, holidays to be had.

Later x

Things I'm looking forward to...

I feel like I'm jumping the gun by focusing on fun things when I haven't finished all my uni things but good grief, I need something to look forward to because I'm so over all the WORK!

SO...

1. My last exam is on Thursday 25th June, so on Friday 26th to Sunday 28th, we have booked a beach house at Horseshoe Bay (Port Elliot, about an hour's drive from Adelaide), right on the beach front. I cannot even tell you how much I am looking forward to that even though it is the middle of winter LOL! I love the idea of a wintery beach weekend. I love the beach when it's all overcast and grey and stormy. *sigh* We will have a whole town-house all to ourselves, with wine and chocolate on arrival, fluffy towels, fully equipped kitchen, views across the ocean to Granite Island. mmmm.... sounds heavenly to me.

And it was cheaper than cabin in the local caravan park!! So here is where we are staying:



2. We have finally booked our weekend in SYDNEY. YAY! The three of us are all going for four days from 2 - 5 July, which will be fab and I can't wait. My friend Beany is having her 30th birthday so I will get an actual night out with the girls. I'm busily emailing and texting everyone and have almost got our entire 4 days fully booked. It's going to be the usual whirlwind, which I love.

3. I booked into a 2-day photography course at the end of July. This is something I had on my list of things to do in 2009 so I'm really excited about it. It runs over 2 Sundays and is for Digital SLRs. We have one of those (read: Mel has one of those) (digital SLR, that is) and I have never used it even once. It cost a freakin' fortune and has extra lenses and all sorts of fancy things.. the whole works and jerks. So I finally said, well I know you think it's your camera but it's a marriage so it's 50/50 buddy, hand it over. He was more than happy to lend me his fancy camera to do a photography course.
note: I will lay money right now that after I've done the photography course and I start using the camera all the time, he will very generously offer to give me "his" camera so that he can buy himself a new one. No really, who wants to bet?

4. YOGA! Oh my god, I have wanted to find a good yoga centre for ages and I've been looking, looking, looking and even online I've looked but the other night for some reason I searched somewhere I hadn't searched before and VOILA, there is a yoga centre about 2 minutes from my house. AND they were advertising a beginner's course starting next Tuesday night for 10 weeks. So I booked! Yay!

5. I told you about the Gold Coast already, right? Or did I? Well we booked 10 days at Surfer's Paradise in December and I'm wetting my pants. Seriously, I'm like a puppy peeing with excitement. I'm going to a new-age hippy-crap waste-of-money seminar (because you know how I love that stuff) for one day, and we basically used that as an excuse to go there for a holiday. So I'm going to drag my friend Jen (who I haven't seen for about 2 years) along with me to the seminar and then me and Mav and Belle are going to soak up the sun for a week and take her (Belle that is, not Jen :-) to all the theme parks and eat and shop and have more fun than you can imagine.


6. There is no six. Well, there was talk of a trip to Bali in mid-July but it clashes with a few things now that I booked photography and yoga! Mel is probably going to his best mate's 50th birthday in China but I'll stay home. We are planning a Melbourne weekend soon too, but nothing definite.

Wow. How did I go from having no fun at all to having all this fun? It's almost too much fun for one person.

Anyway - before I get carried away, I have an assignment to do and an exam to study for and two friends who I promised card readings for and they are waiting very patiently!

Onwards...